It’s funny how music moves in cycles. The sound of 80’s pop is back in. Those first two videos sound and look like they could have been made in the mid-80’s; a combination of YAZ, Blondie, and Culture Club. Not bad. Are you a fan of 80’s hard rock? Then I’ve got lots of recommendations! Good luck with the house!

This is my contribution to the open music thread….My son is an ELCA pastor. This week, nation-wide community service-minded kids and their leaders gathered in Detroit. 30,000(!!!) of them!! By day they are assigned projects in the city to pretty it up…build stuff. At night, they gather at a large venue for singing/entertainment Last night, it was some ballpark, and as a surprise and “thank you”, a bunch of the original Motown bands showed up and entertained the heck out of them…Temptations, etc.

@redshirt: Mmm, not the 80s, but the Doors and any song sung by Ringo Starr are easy. The GoGos and the Cars are pretty easy too. Madonna is easy. I don’t know your gender so I’m just trying to throw out ones that will work for either one. The B-52s.

@benw: Archons from San Diego. This was the only music I could find of them online. My friends and I were watching them with our eyes wide because they kept rolling amps into the tiny club we were at like- no way they’re playing through all that. I had earplugs in and it was still loud. San Diego oddly has a lot of heavy metal. I don’t know why.

@efgoldman: I’ve MC’d, DJ’d, run a few game shows, and the like, so I feel like karaoke – which I’ve never done once – should translate to that same public performance vibe. Maybe I’m wrong and I’ll be terrible. I’ll make sure to drink several strong something’s before getting onstage.

The married woman I am going with is a pro who won a karaoke contest in 2011.

@SatanicPanic: I grew up in San Diego. It has an awesome metal and punk scene. I guess that’s odd because SD is a warm, California place, but a lot of really cool metal and punk bands are from SD. I don’t know Archons, but if you were rocking at their show you killed it!

@redshirt: That’d do. On 4th of July a few years back my wife was belting out ‘Big Spender’ with all the grace of a singer with about 6 marguritas in her. She sounded great, but perhaps captured the essence of the song a bit too much. If you go with that Devinyls classic, you might want to keep it to around 3 lest you too capture too much of the essence of the song.

@Mnemosyne (tablet): He absolutely made my New Dealer mother’s skin crawl- she could hardly stand to hear his name spoken, and she always made with the sour vinegar face when it was.. That episode concerning his other family managed to sink him even lower in my eyes (something I didn’t think possible). And to this day it’s incomprehensible to me why the democratic party didn’t rally to Gray Davis (as it damn well should have).

Home from seeing Bernie Sanders. What a great event. The crowd was estimated at over 11K people, from what I heard. Very issues-driven and positive and substantive. No protesters, but a shit-ton of traffic.

I don’t expect him to win, but I am very glad that he is proving that there is a big space in the party and the culture to talk about these issues.

By the rules of the recall, Gray Davis was out no matter what — the recall petition was successful, therefore he was gone and the only alternative was to vote for the Lt. Governor at the time, Cruz Bustamante. Bustamante was not well-known, so it was easy to get weakly-attached Dems and independents to vote for the big name on the ticket.

@Cacti: This just shows that Secretary John Kerry is worth several of Senator John McCain. McCain never said a word when the swift-boat traitors were sliming Kerry because he was against the Viet-Nam war, like probably 80 or 90% of the population who knew anything about it.

Ever since I learned that McCain called his wife a c**t to her face in front of reporters I have known that he is an honor free zone all his own. He married her for her money, which he has used to create his political position of power, and now that he feels he no longer needs her money, he feels no need to respect her.